Man Gets Nine Years For Obstructing Probe

A New York man was sentenced this week to nine years in prison for obstructing a federal grand jury investigation into the 1996 murder-for-hire of a Hartford gang leader.

Raymond Pina, 28, who was sentenced Monday in New Haven by U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton, was convicted in April of tampering with a witness who was to testify about the plot to kill Theodore ``Teddy'' Casiano. The jury found that Pina told the witness not to appear before the grand jury and to lie about his whereabouts. Pina eventually was apprehended in Miami.

Casiano, who belonged to the Savage Nomads gang, was involved in a feud with a group led by Wilfredo Perez and Jose Antonio Perez, federal authorities said. The Perez brothers, who suspected Casiano of moving in on their multimillion-dollar cocaine operation, paid two New York hit men $6,000 to kill him.

Pina had traveled to Hartford with the killers the day before Casiano was gunned down near an auto shop that the Perez brothers owned, according to law enforcement officials, but he did not participate in the shooting.